Tank Squad News

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 36th Development Status. You can see on what we were working the last three weeks.

[h3]PAK 40[/h3]

PaK 40 - a German 75 mm anti-tank cannon developed between 1939 and 1941 and used by the German army during World War II.



[h3]ZiS-3[/h3]

ZiS-3 - a Soviet 76 field gun developed in 1942 and used during World War II by Soviet army.



[h3]Swamps[/h3]
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]
Prohorovka is a map mostly filled with grasslands, forests, and smaller urban agglomerations, which might seem a bit monotonous to some of the players. As a solution to this matter, we've decided to introduce a bit of variation in the form of a new terrain biome - the swamps.
Our main intention was to create an immersive surrounding that would make you guys feel the grim atmosphere of the wetland and provide some exploration potential for those, who curiously look at the world around them. You may find here tons of mud, puddles of the marsh water, and only a few roads that guarantee a safe passage - going out of the track might be beneficial, but you do it at your own risk!
The production process of a swamp was fairly easy, as it only required the use of basic terrain deformation tools, followed by polishing with some additional details - you may see it on our timelapse above! As we all know, nature is the most impressive artist, and to replicate its creations we needed some randomness and "organized chaos". Therefore, we used irregular "terrain brushes" to obtain natural-looking curves with randomized height and shapes of the "ground islets". Once the formation was done, we covered the area with a mixture of different textures and adjusted the water's color, so that it would suit the gloomy vibe of a smelly morass. Thus, after a few hours of creative efforts, we are finished with a new - hopefully interesting - location that is waiting for your tanks to come and take the challenge. Make sure that you pack a few shovels and equip the vehicles with a towing chain - the peat ground is dense and it most certainly won't give you an easy fight!

[h3]Level Blockout[/h3]
We’ve recently changed our approach to level blockout - unlike previously, now we are using very basic-looking, geometric assets which’s the main purpose is to communicate terrain’s logical role. Our main concern is to place the obstacles, enemies, objectives, and events in such a way that it provides a player with the best gameplay experience possible.
As you can see, our map currently looks more like a floor full of plastic toys, rather than a photorealistic eastern terrain, but this is the case - for now, we are going for simplicity and clarity. This reversed strategy will allow us to precisely determine which parts of the map are still under blockout processing and which have already been finished.
Once the blockout stage is considered to be done, environment artists will take rule over the area and change it into more visually appealing - stay tuned, as we will most certainly share the results with you in the future!



Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 35th Development Status. You can see on what we were working the last two weeks.

[h3]Tents[/h3]
The Truppenzelt was used as a storage or quarters for German officers and soldiers.


The Große Stabszelt - Germans used a unique painted camouflage on these tents.


Zeltbahn - Soldiers needed at least 4 pieces to make a tent.



[h3]Level Design[/h3]
During the last two weeks we worked hard on the maps' design - not only on the blockout but holistically revised our vision on the objectives, surroundings, and experience that we want to provide you with. In this task, our team was supported by a fresh member, Mikołaj, who from now on will work primarily as Level Designer for the Tank Squad project. As we want to deliver the best possible quality, in terms of both visual and gameplay design, we are currently working only on Prohorovka, to give it all the time and love it deserves.

That being said, we may assure you guys that now we have a clear overview of all primary and secondary objectives, which allows us to focus on building the surroundings, placing enemies, and testing the gameplay. So far, we have filled the left flank of Prohorovka with occupied villages, lines of deadly trenches, and a few Soviet outposts that will try to prohibit German forces from breaking their defenses and besieging the city.

In the nearest future, we will continue designing the western scenario, which will include some difficult terrain and a few easter eggs - be sure to look for them closely, once you’re deployed on the battlefield!

[h3]Animations[/h3]
In our game, you’ll be able to order AI units to repair a tank. We’ve created a set of animations to visualize AI repairing it.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Panzer of the Lake[/h3]
O Panzer of the Lake, what is your wisdom?
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]TikTok[/h3]
We recently launched a company TikTok, where you can find additional footage from Tank Squad production and our other games. This is another platform where we will be able to publish our content and keep in touch with you. We also hope that this will attract more players to us.

Watch us and leave some kind of trace of yourself in the form of a like or a comment! :)
https://www.tiktok.com/@degeneralsofficial

Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 34th Development Status. You can see on what we were working the last two weeks.

[h3]Canisters[/h3]
Canisters and fuel cans have been used to store liquids such as fuel, oil, or water.
We’ve made 20l canisters for water and fuel.

Kraftstoff - fuel.
Wasser - water.

Those canisters have a white cross painted on them to avoid confusion. Pouring water into a tank engine or a soldier taking a sip of fuel thinking its water is rather unpleasant.



Oil has been stored in smaller triangular cans which came in 10l, 15l, and 20l sizes. Tiger’s engine needed up to 26l of oil. We’ve decided to use in game only 10l cans.



[h3]Engine hoist[/h3]
Engine hoist will be used in Tank Squad to repair the tank’s engine separately.



[h3]QA Testing[/h3]
We're hard at work as QA here. Our recent focus has been on the multiplayer features to make sure that everything is ironed out and ready for you when the game is finally available. We worked to make sure synchronization works properly and have recently closed more than 50 issues. As one example, we thoroughly tested the task system to ensure that players could properly be assigned tasks by the game host. We're happy with the progress being made.
We saw that on the Repair scene walking between different points of interest was a bit annoying since the distance between them was really long.
With the developers, we were able to optimize many things regarding this, and now walking between various places feels much smoother.
We've expanded our numbers in the QA department so you can rest assured we're serious about this. In just one month, we quadrupled the number of testers in the company, and having these new eyes is clearly helping the development.
There are some examples of bugs that we have encountered, and we are working at:



[h3]Optimization[/h3]
We’ve done a performance test and analysis of the repair station scene. We’ve found some bottlenecks that were a great burden to the game’s performance:

• Textures resolution was too high
  
• Vehicles that were not interactive were too complex
  
• Vegetation had to polygons
  
• There were some unnecessary objects and game components that were not used
  

We’ve optimized those and a result we have:

• Lowered amount of batches from 10 000 to 4 500.
  
• Lowered the number of triangles from 100 million to 17 million.
  
• Gained an additional 15 FPS.
  
• Lowered RAM use from 21GB to 12GB.
  

That has been one of the stages of optimization. Now we are going to test and optimize performance once a week to make sure the game runs smoothly.

Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 33rd Development Status. You can see on what we were working the last two weeks.

[h3]Release date postponed[/h3]
As we have reported before in comments on the Steam forum or discord conversations, we have to postpone the release date to Q4 2023. We are still working on the game as you can see in the devstatuses, but adding all the content we want takes more time than we anticipated when we started this project. We apologize for this delay. We hope that by doing so, we will be able to bring you the high quality game you have been waiting for so much.

[h3]Soviet “Teplushka” railway wagon[/h3]


[h3]Turret Stands and ladders[/h3]


[h3]Extinguisher[/h3]


[h3]New testers[/h3]
This month two new QA testers, Jakub and Marcin, have joined DeGenerals to help us with the testing of the game and its features. Their responsibilities consist of explorative tests where they just play the game and notify us about bugs they have found, standardized tests where they test a specific aspect of the game with a checklist, for example, they test each character animation for each character; and gameplay tests where they judge whether the game is fun enough. QA department in our studio has got currently 4 people. They are responsible for the final quality of the game.

[h3]Tank parts assemble and dissemble[/h3]
While holding a specific item (in this case - Notepad) Player will switch to Repair Mode which let him add or remove smaller vehicle parts. There are two available modes at the moment - “Dismount” and “Mount”. In “Mount” mode, we can highlight parts we want to remove just by looking at them. After switching to “Dismount” mode, all available empty slots for parts will be highlighted, looking at such a slot lets the player see if he can put a vehicle part in its place or if it’s blocked by other slots. This is the third way for modifying our vehicles. Now some parts need to use the crane, some can be carried around by the player character and some can be dismounted/mounted this way.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Visit at tank museum[/h3]


We are delighted to inform you that we have started cooperation with the Museum of Military Technology Gryf (PL: Muzeum Techniki Wojskowej "GRYF")!

Thanks to their rich collection of vehicles, exhibits, and documentation, we will be able to provide you with even more detailed models of tanks, weapons and other equipment.

We encourage you to visit their website and have a tour in person, just like we did or follow latest news from here!
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals

[h2]Dear Tankers,[/h2]

Welcome to our 32nd Development Status. Check out our work from last three weeks

[h3]Anhanger maschinensats sd.ah.24[/h3]
The Sd. Ah. 24 Maschinensatz was used to transport the heavy machine set A with a power of 220/380 V, 12 KW, 25 ampere. Usually, the Sd. Ah. 24 was used by radio and maintenance units.



[h3]Characters on the repair scene[/h3]
We’ve created some idle animations for NPC characters in the repair station. It adds some life and makes the scene more interesting.
[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]UI Markers[/h3]
To help the player better and faster prepare for the next battle, we have designed a system of so-called Repair Tasks, which will include the repair/replacement/replenishment of tank resources, troops, and other bonus items. Each task will have a hint or several hints and landmarks of the places where this task must be completed. For example, the player has the task of finding out information about the upcoming battle, so at the moment in the game, he will have HQ indicated when talking with which he will find out all the necessary information.



[h3]UI Compass[/h3]
As you can see, some tasks will consist of several tasks, and to improve the orientation in the area when searching for the location of these tasks, we have made a special compass that the player can see at the top of the screen. Here, in turn, special hints will be displayed that make up a holistic task, which was described earlier.



[h3]Water and mud VFX[/h3]
We present three new dedicated particle effects. They are activated during the following actions: when the tank enters muddy water, when is inside and finally, when leaves the water surface. Particles are simulated from two-dimensional billboards, which were originally generated in software called Houdini and then exported as a texture atlas.
Also, the following video shows new mud materials, based on a technique called flow mapping. As the name suggests, new materials use shaders with supports for flow maps. These textures contain vector data for local distortions of UV coordinates, which allows for the creation of more realistic fluid surface animations.

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Thank you and have a good one!
DeGenerals